Plácido Domingo

If I rest, I rust®

During his teens, when he was enrolled in Mexico City’s National Conservatory of Music, Plácido Domingo observed the conducting course of the celebrated Russian conductor Igor Markevitch, and he did some conducting with his parents’ zarzuela company. His professional conducting debut took place in 1973, when he led a performance of La Traviata with New York City Opera at Lincoln Center. Through the end of 2018, he had conducted some 607 performances altogether, including operas and concerts.

The following is a list of some of his most significant conducting debuts.

New York, New York City Opera, La Traviata, 1973
Barcelona, Liceu, Attila, 1973
Hamburg, Staatsoper, Il Trovatore, 1975
Munich, Bayerische Staatsoper, La Forza del Destino, 1976
San Francisco, War Memorial Opera House, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, 1976
Vienna, Staatsoper, Die Fledermaus, 1978
Frankfurt, Oper, Die Fledermaus, 1979
London, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, Die Fledermaus, 1983
New York, Metropolitan Opera, La Bohème, 1984
Los Angeles, Macbeth, 1987
Madrid, symphonic concert, 1988
Seville, Carmen, 1992
Verona, Arena, Aida, 1994
Zurich, Oper, La Bohème, 1995
Berlin, symphonic concert, 1996
Chicago, symphonic concert, 1997
Tokyo (Metropolitan Opera tour), Carmen, 1997
Mexico City, Luisa Fernanda, 1998
Washington, D.C., Washington Opera, Samson et Dalila, 1998
Rome, Opera di Roma, Tosca, 2000
St. Petersburg, Mariinsky Theater, Aida, 2001
Paris, Operalia concert, 2003
Warsaw, Verdi Requiem, 2006
Milan, La Scala, Operalia concert, 2010
Dresden, symphonic concert, 2017
Prague, Don Giovanni, 2017
Bayreuth, Die Walküre, 2018

On November 21, 2012, Domingo was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), in recognition of his "exceptional artistic career, his inestimable support for young opera musicians through the Operalia competition, and his dedication to the values and ideals of UNESCO.”

In 2011 Domingo accepted the honorary chairmanship of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which is trying to cope with the enormous problems that face creative and performing artists in the Internet age, when copyright problems have become extraordinarily difficult.

“I want to see a digital world that provides young artists with the kind of opportunities I was fortunate enough to have early in my career,” he says, and “that can only happen if governments around the world play their part in making sure the laws that protected creators in the physical delivery age are updated for the digital delivery age.”

In 2010 Domingo became president of Europa Nostra, an association that works to safeguard Europe’s cultural heritage whenever it is threatened by natural calamities, by human beings, or by neglect or even ignorance.

In her will, the great Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson (1918-2005) left instructions for a prize of $1,000,000 to be awarded approximately once every three years to a person or institution that has made a major contribution to opera.

This is the most generous prize in the world of classical music. Nilsson personally decided who the first prize-winner was to be: Plácido Domingo. Domingo is using these funds to help support Operalia.

Although in his teens Plácido had sung some high baritone roles in zarzuelas, as an opera singer he sang only tenor roles – until 2009, when he made his debut as a baritone in the title role of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra with the Berlin Staatsoper.

In 2000, Domingo was a recipient of one of the Kennedy Center Honors, alongside Angela Lansbury, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Clint Eastwood, and Chuck Berry.

From 1996 to 2003, Domingo was Artistic Director of Washington National Opera, which is based at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and from 2003 to 2011 he was WNO’s General Director.

Also in 2003, Domingo became General Director of Los Angeles Opera, after having been Artistic Director since the 1980s; his current contract there runs until 2019.

Domingo sang the Olympic Anthem at the Barcelona Summer Olympics in 1992; at the final performance of the World Cup in Germany in 2006; and at the closing ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008.

In 1991, Domingo was honored with Spain’s Premio Príncipe de Asturias, which is given to people or institutions of exceptional accomplishments in the arts and sciences.

Also in his native country, he has received the Gran Cruz de la Orden de Isabel la Católica and the Medalla de la Orden de las Artes y las Letras de España.

Other awards include the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the United States and the titles of Commander of the Legion of Honor in France, Honorary Knight of the British Empire, and both Grande Ufficiale and Cavaliere di Gran Croce of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

He has also received honorary doctorates from the University of Oxford, New York University, and Georgetown University in Washington, DC, for his lifelong commitment and contribution to music and the arts.

In 1993 he was presented with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

On July 7, 1990, the eve of the FIFA World Cup soccer games in Rome, Domingo, together with his fellow-singers Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras and conductor Zubin Mehta, gave a charity concert that was viewed by millions of people around the world and was a huge success.

This led to many other performances of The Three Tenors, not only at the successive World Cup events (1994, 1998, and 2002), but also in a world tour in 1996-97 and at various other moments.

The Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti wrote an opera, Goya, specifically for Domingo, based on the life of the great Spanish painter, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes.

It premiered at Washington in 1986, with Plácido in the title role and Spanish conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos on the podium.

Goya was the most ambitious project that Washington Opera had undertaken to date, and it paved the way for an ongoing, close relationship between Domingo and the company.

September 1985, while Domingo was performing in Chicago, he learned that a terrible earthquake had struck Mexico City, and he flew there as quickly as possible.

His immediate family members were unharmed, but an aunt, uncle, and cousin had disappeared. Plácido began digging with his own hands, and he organized a committee to assist with the rescue operations.

Unfortunately, the aunt, uncle, and cousin had died in the disaster, but for an entire year he sang in benefit events and dedicated the proceeds to relief for the survivors and to reconstruction projects.

The Mexican government awarded him the Order of the Aztec Eagle – the highest honor given to foreigners. (Plácido is a Spanish citizen.)

In October 1982, Domingo sang at a benefit concert at the Vatican, had an audience with Pope John Paul II (he had met Pope Paul VI in 1970) and was made a Commendatore of the Italian Republic by President Sandro Pertini.

Over the years, he has met the presidents, prime ministers, and royal families of many countries all over the world.

Following the Ponnelle-Karajan Butterfly film, Plácido participated in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1982 cinema version of La traviata, with Levine conducting, Teresa Stratas as Violetta, and Cornell MacNeil as Germont.

This was followed, in 1984, by a film of Carmen directed by Francesco Rosi, with Julia Migenes Johnson in the title role, Ruggero Raimondi as Escamillo, Faith Esham as Micaëla, and Lorin Maazel conducting.

Maazel also conducted Zeffirelli’s 1986 film of Otello, in which Domingo sang opposite Katia Ricciarelli as Desdemona and Justino Díaz as Iago.

By 1982, when Newsweek magazine featured him on its cover as “The King of Opera,” Plácido Domingo, at the age of forty-one, was world famous. He had sung in Japan and Chile, in Russia and Monaco, and just about everywhere in between.

His voice and his face had become familiar not only to opera lovers and to classical music enthusiasts, but also to people who followed his appearances on television and listened to his various “crossover” recordings.

In 1984 he won the Best Latin Pop Performance Grammy for the album, “Always in My Heart.” “Perhaps Love,” a recording he made with John Denver, sold over 1.5 million copies. He appeared on the Johnny Carson show and on the children’s series, “Sesame Street.” He performed in zarzuelas and in programs of zarzuela excerpts, all over the world. In short, the name Plácido Domingo had become a household word.

Domingo first worked with the legendary conductor Herbert von Karajan in 1974, when he took the part of Pinkerton in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s film of Madama Butterfly, of which Karajan conducted the sound track.

The following year – and precisely on August 11, 1975 – Domingo made his Salzburg Festival debut in Don Carlo, with Karajan in charge of both the music and the staging.

Later, Plácido sang with Karajan on several other occasions, including Il trovatore in Vienna, the Verdi Requiem in Salzburg, and a classic recording of Turandot.

September 28, 1975, remains a historic date for Domingo. On that day, in Hamburg, he gave his first performance of the title role in Verdi’s Otello, with Katia Ricciarelli as Desdemona, Sherrill Milnes as Iago, and James Levine on the podium.

For nearly thirty years, Plácido practically “owned” this role, which he sang all over the world, with some of the finest conductors and stage directors and opposite two generations of leading sopranos and baritones.

It was a risky undertaking at the age of thirty-four, because the part of Otello is so difficult, musically, dramatically, and emotionally, but he triumphed with it.

In the fall of 1973, while he was singing in productions of La traviata and Il trovatore at the Met, Domingo made his debut as an opera conductor with New York City Opera, also in La traviata. He has since conducted over 300 opera and concert performances all over the world.

Domingo made his Paris debut on 20 May 1973, singing Il trovatore at the Opéra.

He has since returned many times to Paris, where he was awarded Medal of the City of Paris, and he is much loved in France, which has made him a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and showered many more awards on him.

The first half of 1972 was one of the busiest periods in Plácido’s singing career. He made his debuts in Piacenza, Amsterdam, Munich, Mantua, Belgrade, Memphis, Caracas, and Zurich, as well as returning to sing in London, Hamburg, Vienna, New York, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Washington, Miami, Milan, Boston, Cleveland, Atlanta, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Detroit, San Juan, Madrid, and Vienna – in 19 different operas plus four concerts! And in July he made his Argentine debut at the great Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, in La forza del destino.

Not that subsequent periods in Domingo’s career have been relaxing! The rhythm is sometimes a little less strenuous, but he has never sat still for long.

Commitments elsewhere had postponed Domingo’s debut with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, which finally took place on December 8, 1971, in Tosca, with Gwyneth Jones in the title role and Kostas Paskalis as Scarpia.

He was very warmly received and has maintained an excellent relationship with the ensemble ever since.

1971 was also the year in which Domingo recorded Aida with Leontyne Price, Grace Bumbry, Sherrill Milnes, and Ruggero Raimondi, with Erich Leinsdorf on the podium of the London Symphony Orchestra.

With this recording he won a Grammy Award for Principal Soloist in an opera recording; it was the first of nine Grammys and four Latin Grammys that he has won so far.

Singing Edgardo in Lucia opposite Joan Sutherland, in Hamburg in 1971, was “among the greatest performance experiences of my life,” Domingo said. He, too, was in excellent voice, and Sutherland joked with him: “If you continue to sing this so well, I won’t like you so much.”

In some ways, though, an even more emotional experience for Domingo was his debut in Madrid, his home town, in La Gioconda, on May 14, 1970, at the Teatro de la Zarzuela. “The ovation after my aria, ‘Cielo e mar,’ was so great and so warm that I could not help myself – I began to cry,” he recalled. But he finally managed to get a grip on himself and to proceed normally.

Performances at the Met, Hamburg, and elsewhere continued to be scheduled, and by now the name Plácido Domingo was becoming known to opera lovers all over the world.

In May 1969 he made his London debut, not in an opera but in a concert performance of the Verdi Requiem with the New Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by the great Carlo Maria Giulini, and with fellow singers Gwyneth Jones, Josephine Veasey, and Raphael Arié.

In Hamburg in January 1968, Domingo sang the title role in Lohengrin – his first Wagner part and the first time he was singing in German. The intense preparations caused him to have vocal problems, but by May he was in top form for his Canadian debut – Tosca, in Vancouver.

During the summer he made his first two recordings, both of opera arias – one for the Decca/London label, the other for RCA.

The redoubtable Sarah Caldwell engaged Domingo to sing with her Boston Opera Company, in Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie, opposite Beverly Sills, and in La Bohème, opposite the already legendary Renata Tebaldi.

By the spring of 1965, Plácido had been given contracts for summer performances in the United States. He and Marta left Tel Aviv in June – and Plácido’s international career really began.

Domingo made his New York debut on October 17, singing Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly with New York City Opera, and four days later Marta gave birth to their first son, Plácido, Jr.

During this period of artistic and human growth, and early opera experiences, Domingo met and became close to Marta Ornelas, an aspiring young soprano who studied at the National Conservatory, and after a courtship that lasted over a year (“the most wonderful period in my life,” Plácido said) they were married on August 1, 1962.

They wondered where to go to complete their training, but when they plus their friend Franco Iglesias, a baritone, were offered contracts with the Hebrew National Opera in Tel Aviv, they decided to go to Israel.

This was in keeping with Domingo’s preference for “learning things by doing them rather than by mastering the theory behind them.”

For Plácido Domingo, Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) has been and continues to be the greatest provider of opera roles. Roughly one-quarter of all of Domingo’s opera performances have taken place under the Verdi banner. Domingo loves not only Verdi’s great skill in vocal writing but also the emotional power and intensity, the dramatic truth, and the amazing way in which each character in every opera is magnificently delineated.

He made his opera debut in the small role of Borsa in Rigoletto, in Mexico City in 1959, and two years later, in Monterrey, Mexico, he sang Alfredo in La Traviata – his first leading role. Altogether, he has sung twenty-six different roles in seventeen different Verdi operas, not counting parts that he only recorded but did not perform on stage. Most extraordinary is the record of his 225 performances of the title role in Otello, with which he was closely identified for a quarter of a century.

Here is a list, arranged alphabetically by opera, of Domingo’s Verdi roles, with the number of performances of each part. Baritone roles are given in boldface; all the others are tenor roles.

Aida – Radamès 77
Ballo in Maschera, Un – Riccardo 76
Don Carlo – Don Carlo 41, Rodrigo 15
Due Foscari, I – Francesco Foscari 37
Ernani – Ernani 14, Don Carlo 6
Forza del Destino, La – Alvaro 41
Giovanna d’Arco – Giacomo 3
Luisa Miller – Rodolfo 16, Miller 6
Macbeth – Macbetto 35
Nabucco – Nabucco 30
Otello – Otello 225
Rigoletto – Borsa 5, Duca di Mantova 12, Rigoletto 2
Simon Boccanegra – Gabriele Adorno 14, Simon Boccanegra 72
Stiffelio – Stiffelio 28
Traviata, La – Gastone 5, Alfredo Germont 50, Giorgio Germont 42
Trovatore, Il – Manrico 50, Conte di Luna 10
Vespri Siciliani, I – Arrigo 14

Plus: Messa da Requiem – tenor part 20

Over the following four years, Domingo:
• accompanied his mother in vocal recitals,
• sang high baritone roles in his parents’ zarzuela company,
• studied voice (especially interpretation) with the well-known baritone Carlo Morelli,
• sang a minor part (and assisted in coaching and conducting) in 185 performances of the first Mexican production of My Fair Lady,
• accompanied a young singer in her nightclub performances,
• alternated in the roles of Camillo and Danilo in over 170 performances of The Merry Widow,
• sang in The Redhead, another musical,
• played the piano for a touring ballet company,
• had his own music program on Mexico’s first cultural television station, Channel 11,
• took acting lessons,
• acted in and selected music for televised plays by Pirandello, Benavente, García Lorca, and Chekhov,
• trained a chorus for a special zarzuela season, and
• made Spanish-language arrangements of American pop songs and sometimes even sang in them.

In 1946, Federico Moreno Torroba, the most important modern zarzuela composer, formed his own zarzuela company, which included Domingo’s parents, and took it on a two-year tour of Latin America. At the end of it, the Mexican admirers of Pepita and Plácido, Sr., persuaded the couple to form their own company in Mexico City.

The couple sent for their children, who, accompanied by an aunt, traveled across the Atlantic and arrived in Mexico three days before Plácido’s eighth birthday. The country would be his home until he was twenty-one years old.

He attended school at the Instituto México, played soccer as much as possible (he remains a great soccer enthusiast to this day), but, at the same time, began “to gravitate toward the performances that my parents’ company gave,” he says. When children were needed in a production, Plácido and Mari Pepa were pressed into service, and so “I began to learn the basics of theatrical practice from the time I was small.” But he also saw how difficult the financial end of running a company could be, and how his parents worried when the theatre was half empty.

He was given piano lessons, demonstrated great talent, and when he was fourteen his parents enrolled him at Mexico’s National Conservatory, where he studied both musical and academic subjects.

"I owe my love of music to the zarzuelas I so often heard from the time I was a small boy."

All of Domingo’s early musical memories are tied in with the zarzuela, which he heard constantly, practically from the day he was born. “The zarzuelas fascinated me, and I still love them,” he says.

He has devoted much energy, over the years, to keeping this art form alive throughout the Spanish-speaking world and beyond. “Just as in other art forms, so with the zarzuela there are great, good, so-so, bad, and terrible works,” he says, “but the best of them are very much worth performing.”

His father, Plácido Domingo, Sr., was a baritone from Zaragoza in the Aragon region, and his mother, Pepita Embil, a soprano, was a zarzuela star from Guetaria in the Basque country. “Both the Basques and the Aragonese are said to be stubborn, hard-headed,” Domingo says. “This is a useful heritage for anyone who makes his career in the performing arts.”

He and his younger sister, Mari Pepa, had a happy childhood, surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins even when their parents were away touring. “I remember the comfortable feeling of the constant rotation in my life – home, school, playing in the park, day after day."